Is the new META WhatsApp message prices affecting your business?

Hey ​@SSTrey yeah this is not ideal, but Meta and Manychat did give notice. Manychat’s official notice and rate card came out on Sept 17th, and Meta’s official docs were available way before that.

So yeah, it’s a shocker, but it’s been public info for a few weeks/months.

As for the impact:

For most of our clients, the impact is negligible.

And we have 2 scenarios here:

Scenario 1 - Traffic from Ads: in this case, the messages are free for 1 week now, so it’s better than before, and impact is almost null. And the messages outside this window are the minority, so with a few dollars per month they’re covered.

Scenario 2 - Specialty low-volume tools: these are custom-built solutions for specific tasks, like communicating with distributors, order intake forms, etc. In these cases, the 1000 free messages end up going a long way, and we’re estimating that the impact on businesses will amount to an extra $10-$20 per month on messages.

For a couple of clients, the impact has been important.

These are clients running mostly organic traffic and high volume. Which is likely your scenario.

For these cases, the actual impact depends on the country where their subscribers are. In the regions I work most, Colombia is extremely cheap, while Argentina, Chile and Spain are crazy expensive (to name a few examples).

We’re running the numbers on these cases, and the impact so far seems to be a few hundred USD per month, depending on traffic.

Here’s the thing, though…

When you take the cost on a per-user-served basis, it’s really not that significant…

In most cases, we’re talking about 5-25 cents extra per each user served and taken care of through WhatsApp.

The alternatives (human attention for example) would cost way more than that. And everybody has WhatsApp and replies on WhatsApp, so there really isn’t a replacement capable of achieving the same results.

Also, there’s no real WhatsApp alternative. All these free options that you may find put your number at risk - which, for a serious business, is not a viable option.

Having said that, for some clients where traffic is high, in expensive countries (such as the ones I mentioned), and the automation is providing real value that people are really willing to make an extra effort to get it, we’re considering adding Telegram as an option and having the same automations there.

The strategy we’re considering is: have some on WhatsApp, and if you want more, go to Telegram and have unlimited there.

So we do the business-critical actions on WhatsApp (that’s where we get the best results), and if the person wants more, they go the extra mile and continue on Telegram, where messages are free!

Thanks for this reply ​@Gustavo Boregio 
The Job Application system I have setup has 19 message steps in the Manychat workflow per user per application.
The challenge I have is that I am receiving 900 to 1000 applications per month.
Here in South Africa, it is $0,0095, so I guess not as cheap as Columbia, and not as expensive as Arg, Chile or Spain.
As the attached, I guess I’m looking at $180 extra.  
 

My only choice may be to pass on this charge to my client as this cost is about 60% of my sales received from them, which is almost my entire margin.

So yeah, it’s about 20 cents per applicant in your case, right?

I’d try to frame it like that for your clients… In most cases, it won’t be a deal breaker in mu opinion, and the alternatives are always more expensive.

Or, as I said, try Telegram. Since this is for people seeking jobs, they may go the extra mile to apply, so it’s possible your reply rates won’t drop that much… You’ll have to test it.

That's correct, rounded off, it will be about 20 cents (US) per applicant.  

Thank's for the framing advice, that makes sense.

I was reading up & wondering … what if I use WhatsApp Flows (I can create a Flow from within WhatsApp Manager > Flows) to achieve this ? I understand that Flows will allow me to create forms as POP ups inside WhatsApp and allow me to capture multiple intake fields at a time, which will allow me to group the intake data into batches and therefore it will bill me as a single service message, and significantly reduce the overall spend.

The only think is, since I have 19 workflow steps and each being saved to it's own CUFs in Manychat, and Make.com being the driving engine, this may mean IL have to do a complete new overhaul of the design architecture and that will take time, something tells me it's not as easy as just migrating, as I will have to rework how Make handles the data and then how it writes it back (to my client's Google Drive), etc.

Re Telegram, it's a good fallback, however here in South Africa, WhatsApp is used by 93% of the market.  It can be an option but I seriously doubt it will adopt as the new norm.

Yeah Telegram is not going to work as well as WhatsApp for sure!

You can try WhatsApp Flows, but they don’t integrate with Manychat. So that means you. migrate to another platform, or go manual.

You can also use a form app (or vibe code it!) and integrate it with Manychat.

The workflow would be:

Start in WhatsApp + Manychat > Send them first instructions + button to the form > Form pops up, they fill in the info and click on ‘Submit’ > once they’re done, use Manychat’s API to send the info back to Manychat > Send them a confirmation message or whatever.

If after x time they haven’t completed the form, use Manychat to send them reminders and such (or give them the option to apply via chat?).

We can develop these things for you if you want… The 20c per applicant will be cheaper than having us do it for you, though… 😅